Where did you learn your brewing techniques?

This thought popped into my head just now, and I am curious to see the results. Personally, I have only been exposed to two peoples' brewing styles consistently: Bryan and Bears x3. Interestingly enough, there hasn't been a lot of "teaching" per se, just more of observing and incorporating; though, mind, when one does offer instruction, it is duly noted.

I've never really had the opportunity to watch someone else brew tea, what I know I've gleaned from the internet, basic parameters googled when faced with a new tea, or simple stuff like 'heat the vessel before brewing' and the like. I may have watched a couple of youtube videos of people doing gong fu but that's been mostly for fun.

I often feel that everybody else probably makes better tea.

Last edited by sriracha on Jun 11th, '12, 14:54, edited 1 time in total.

A couple of books about tea, discussion in tea forums (here and elsewhere), participating in tea tastings (mostly via online forums), and lots and lots of practice and being willing to toss out what I should do for what produces tea that I like to drink.

I learned the hard way, pre internet and living fa fa away from areas where tea is pop.

So, much of what I learned was pieced together and pure trial and error (lots of error) and through self learning. I developed some BBH, bad brewing habits mostly from bad sources. One bad habit I did not pick up however, the very first green tea I ever bought was from RoT, "Sky Between the Branches."

The label said, pour boiling water over the leaves and brew for 5 minutes. The results were ... grossly predictable. But this taught me that there would be a lot of self learning through trial and error. Citizenship in the Republic of Tea did not guarantee good brewing!

Simple things confused me, such as I often wondered why they made some kyusu handles long which worked really well with how I was holding/pouring ... while other handles were really short and did not work for me. I was not able to figure this riddle out til Toru shared the 4 ways to grip a kyusu. "ohhhhhh ... "

Finding TeaChat certainly helped a LOT. I had to eat some humble pie as I realized how little I actually knew.

I guess there is not much teaching because there is no doctrine on this. Eventually it's up to each individual's personal experience to adopt or give up certain brewing method. In this sense, I feel informal exchanges between friends and on tea forums are the best way of learning of brewing techniques. Systematic learning could be a good thing too, and probably necessary for certain tea professionals, as long as one doesn't take everything from the book or from the teacher as absolute truth.

sriracha wrote:I've never really had the opportunity to watch someone else brew tea, what I know I've gleaned from the internet, basic parameters googled when faced with a new tea, or simple stuff like 'heat the vessel before brewing' and the like. I may have watched a couple of youtube videos of people doing gong fu but that's been mostly for fun.

as many times as it's repeated....still...worth another reminder to myself since I often get caught up with this or that

brew according to your tastes and bodily reactions/needs, but realize that those sweet spots will be constantly on the change,moment from moment, year to year, just like we are constantly changing/evolving/growing too

Bumping this one... I'd like more responses, as I'm selfish and curious .

Internet videos and peeps online here is where I've honed my mediocre skills. And of course trial and error.

I'm also blessed to have a member here that lives close by... I learn every time I get together with him... sometimes in subtle ways I don't realize. So I would agree actual human contact while making tea, even infrequently, is a very good resource to have.

FlyedPiper wrote:Bumping this one... I'd like more responses, as I'm selfish and curious .

Internet videos and peeps online here is where I've honed my mediocre skills. And of course trial and error.

I'm also blessed to have a member here that lives close by... I learn every time I get together with him... sometimes in subtle ways I don't realize. So I would agree actual human contact while making tea, even infrequently, is a very good resource to have.

I agree with this 100%. In fact in our last meet up, Seth brewed up two Shincha, mainly at temps I wouldn't usually dare, but it was actually quite good. I've been trying to mimic that but adjust it just slightly to better suit my own personal tastes.

I stared years ago with scientific ideas about water temp, grams, and steep time. That was slowly relaxing as I learned more, but I still had firm ideas than were really useful.

Then I moved to Korea and met a teacher, and eventually his teacher. I have since been exposed to MANY different styles through this company, and I have been traveling around Asia learning from different shopkeepers and drinkers alike.

But really, my style is "listen to the tea" style, which means each steep changes based on the last one!

needaTEAcher wrote:I stared years ago with scientific ideas about water temp, grams, and steep time. That was slowly relaxing as I learned more, but I still had firm ideas than were really useful.

Then I moved to Korea and met a teacher, and eventually his teacher. I have since been exposed to MANY different styles through this company, and I have been traveling around Asia learning from different shopkeepers and drinkers alike.

But really, my style is "listen to the tea" style, which means each steep changes based on the last one!

somehow that reminds me of the movie why bodhi darma moved to the orient.

btw how is korean tea culture more like chinese or more like japanese tea culture and did you ever drink korean black tea???